


Celebration Guns

by Quietbang



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Activism, Angst, Canon LGBT Female Character, F/F, History, Homophobia, M/M, Politics, Pragmatism, Queer Gen, Telepathy, gay and mutant in the 60s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-04 23:31:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quietbang/pseuds/Quietbang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>And so the world reforms and moves on, and if it has no place in it for a tired old man, he has only himself to blame.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>A fic exploring a century of lgbt history as seen through the eyes of a telepath. Written for Queer Fest 2012.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Celebration Guns

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who helped make this fic possible- ascoolsuchasi, for being both a phenomenal beta and an excellent person, pookaseraph, for listening as I panicked over this fic and allowed me to plot much of it out in chat, and afrocurl, for providing a quick and awesome read-through and beta of the sex scene.  
> The title comes from "Celebration Guns", by Stars, which I chose for the verse  
> "So tomorrow there will be another number  
> For the one who had a name  
> Desert wind and a perverse desire to win  
> History buried in shame"

> _The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested or capable of a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. His sex life, his love life, consists of a series of one–chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits. And even on the streets of the city — the pick-up, the one night stand, these are characteristics of the homosexual relationship._

-Mike Wallace, “CBS Reports: The Homosexuals”  


The first time he had given someone a blowjob, he had nearly vomited. Not from the act itself; that had been pleasurable, if a little strange.

Charles has always been particularly adept at shielding but- but he was 17, at the top of his class at Harvard, by all accounts Going Places, and was frantically, _desperately_ , virginal, and when Matthew Stewart, who was brilliant and brash and God- so beautiful, with his neatly parted brown hair and laughing green eyes, the remnants of an Alabama drawl not quite erased from his lips,- when Matthew had touched his arm, the two of them alone in one of the lesser-used chemistry labs, and Charles had felt the _needneedwantneed_ thrumming from the man like an electrical wire, and when he leaned in and kissed him, his rough lips soft against the other's- his shields had fallen to pieces, and, for once in his life, Charles let himself be overtaken completely by liminality.

Matthew had broken away. “We can't- not here.”

And Charles wanted to say 'why not?', wanted to tell him that he could make it so that noone ever found them, wanted to reach into the other man's mind and whisper _no, keep going. Don't stop. You're fine._  
Wanted, more than anything, to reach into himself and remove the small whisper of _wrongsickwrongcan't_ , because Charles is uniquely situated to be both painfully aware of the beliefs of other people and to completely disregard them, if he so chose, and he cannot help but feel, sometimes, that his brain should have evolved beyond this capacity for shame.

But Charles doesn't, because he has learned, even at 17, that there are some things that aren't his to fix, even if it feels like ignoring the obvious solution, like stumbling in the dark by touch rather than opening one's eyes and lighting a lantern, like constantly leaving by the window rather than the door. And so instead he smiled and touched the other man's jawline, the soft scratch of stubble rough beneath his fingers.

“Perhaps,” he opined quietly, because you never knew who might be listening- these were strange times, after all- “We could continue this work at my apartment? I have several books that I think we might find useful in interpreting this data.”

And so they walk back to the shabby set of rooms on the top floor of a stately Victorian row house, Matthew studiously avoiding his eye.  
“Hello?” Charles called, as he pushed open the door. “Mr Landon? Are you home?”

There was no reply.

“I'm upstairs,” he said to Matthew, as though this were a perfectly normal conversation. “Can I get you anything from the kitchen before we go?”

Matthew shook his head silently, and they continued on their way to the top floor, their footsteps echoing throughout the empty house.

(Plenty of people had offered to billet him. People have a habit of loving prodigies, after all- only 17 and already a graduate student, doing things with x-ray crystallography that would make your head spin. They had offered him lodging, food, clothing, and, in one particularly unsubtle case, their teenage daughters; Charles had politely declined them all the day that Mr Landon had called, his rough voice crackling over the party line, and had said “I knew your father.”  
He was a quiet man, and Charles filled the silences best he could.  
After the first night there, he realised that he may have been lucky after all. Charles had never had to learn if the same dreams haunted his father as they did his colleague- equations turning to ash with the destructive power of quantized energy.)

 

When they reached his rooms, he slid the lock across the door, and looked at Matthew.

Matthew stared back at him, his face painful with naked longing.

Charles makes the first move. Of course he does. There is no world in which he does not make the first move.

He takes Matthew's face in his hands, causing the other man to stoop slightly, and slowly pressed his lips against him, his warm breath coming harsh and fast.

He felt his shields shatter, felt the waves of desire being pushed over him, the strength of the _want_ so great that it was almost painful.

Things moved quickly, then; shirts shucked off and belts undone, the arousal of both men painstakingly obvious. The sight of the other man's erection awakened something in Charles, eliciting a whine that was half a groan, needy and desperate, and he frantically warded off orgasm by pressing his hands to the base of his cock, the head already slick with pre-come.

Matthew's face and torso were flushed, his cock pressing at the seams of his underwear, and he stared at Charles with want in his eyes. “Do you- have you ever-?”

 

Charles shrugged, because he was not sure how to say _it's all fairly theoretical at this point, but I've seen this happen in a thousand different minds and several times in fantasies directed at me- how hard can it be?_

He gestured at his cock. “I could- well. Can I touch you?”

 

The other man's eyes widened, and he let out a little groan. “Can you- Yes, yes, God yes, just-”  
Charles smirked, and tentatively took the hardness into his hands, releasing it from the constraints of the cotton briefs. He stroked it absently; surely this couldn't be any different from masturbation, really.

His thoughts flashed on one of the most frequent fantasies directed his way. “I could- my mouth. Would you like that?”  
(In retrospect, he should have known. Should have looked a little deeper, past the overwhelming waves of desire and arousal and _yespleasegodyes_ to find the shame and anger and fear and _noyoucan'tyou'renot-_.  
He would like to be able to say that this was the last time he made that mistake, but he's trying to lie less frequently, at least to himself.)

He shifts slightly, pushing the other man down on the narrow, carefully made bed. He opens his mouth, and slowly- carefully- takes the head of the length into his mind, rotates his tongue around the slit and underside, feeling his cock twitch as he does so. Hands appear out of nowhere and thread themselves through his hair, anchoring him to the other man, grounding him in reality. He opens his mouth a little farther and pushes down, his jaw aching slightly, trying not to choke on the warm musk of Matthew's erection. 

He lathes it with his tongue, resisting the urge to bite down as he sucks lightly. It doesn't take much, and when Matthew comes, he does so with a groan, releasing his hold on Charles' hair.  
Charles, high on the telepathic haze of sated desire and want, reaches between his legs and quickly rubs himself to climax, his breath stuttering and eyes closing slightly.

He drifts off, for a moment, brain still buzzing from pleasure in stereo, and when he comes back to the other man is in the corner, quickly replacing his clothes.

“What is it?” Charles asks, the warmth in his stomach replaced by dread at the anxious buzz projected from the man.

“Nothing,” he says, and his voice is flat and fearful. “Nothing. You - I need to go. I have-”

“Matthew,” Charles says, making his tones round and gentle, “Why are you-”

He places his hand on the other man’s shoulder, and everything goes starkly and stutteringly black.

He blinks.

His ears are ringing, and he takes a step back, releasing his grip on the other man.

“Matt-”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” the other man grits out, and then he straightens, a look of horror on his face. “Oh God- Charles, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“-I think you should leave now,” Charles says.

He does so, his pain and anger and loathing so strong that Charles can taste it; their trace poisoning everything, the memories of the past few minutes, of doing that to another person, of, of-  
Charles barely makes it to the bathroom before he is suddenly and violently ill.

He is in Korea when the wedding invitation comes.

\------

_January 17th, 1959_  


He’d know even if he weren’t a telepath, and it infuriated him, because she _was not being careful_ , and didn’t care.

It would be so easy for her to do it safely- shift into the skin of a man, or (his suggestion after she slapped him roundly for the first) another woman, one who wouldn’t be traced, identified as Raven Xavier when she got on the bus with lipstick on her collar, her shirt hastily and poorly buttoned. And yet- Charles knows, even in this fucked up war-time morality, that that would be _wrong_. But Raven is _safe_ , Raven has been _protected_ , and Charles doesn’t know how to articulate the strange knot of complicated feelings that clutch in his chest when he thinks of his sister being so vulnerable. 

She doesn't see it.

It was a cold night in January when it finally came to a head.

(In another world, Charles does not look up from his papers and glance out the window, head still buzzing at the thought of the work coming out of Montréal and its relevance to his research. In another world, Raven does not laugh, shriek loudly enough to garner his attention.  
In another world, she does not kiss the girl, the dimly lit streets not enough to hide the evidence.  
In another world, history is forever altered. But that is not this world.)

When she opened the door, the last shouts of laughter still lingering on her lips, Charles was putting the kettle on.

He was silent.

“What?” she snapped.

“I saw you,” he said simply, in low, measured tones.

She flushed and tucked her hand into her pocket. “So?”

She attempted to push past him, and was stopped by a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“ _Raven_.”

She looked at him. “ _What?_ ”

“I saw you,” he repeated in measured tones, “I wasn't even looking out the window and I saw you. You made sure of that. I was working, Raven, which means that if _I_ saw you, other people did too.”

He began to wipe down the linoleum, pausing every few seconds to inspect his work.  
He wants to hold her, wants to run his fingers through her hair and reassure himself of her wholeness, wants to whisper in her ear, tell her that _she can't, he can't lose her, not to that_.

Instead, he opened his mouth.

“Do you think you're exempt, Raven?”

Raven glared at him, her eyes gold.

“I can't imagine what you mean.” her voice was cool and clipped, a cruel mockery of Charles'.

“Do you think you're exempt from the law? From society? Anybody could have seen- what if I had been a policeman, hmm? What then?”

“There's no law against- what we do. Women, I mean.” The defiance was gone from her tone, replaced by a cold anger.

Charles breathed deeply, glaring at a particularly stubborn spot. He was panicking, he knew that, but- _why couldn't she see_?

“No, you're right,” he said, forcing himself to unclench his hands. “There's no law against it. You're right. And of course, if a policeman came across two tommys in the streets, he's just- what? Let you go away? Wouldn't hit you, of course, wouldn't beat a woman and leave her dying in the gutter, but do you really think he'd just let you leave? Without trying to cure you with his cock?”

Ravne closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose as though staving off a migraine. 

“Just because you're _ashamed_ -”

“-This isn't shame, Raven! It's caution! I should think that you, of all people, would know the difference.”

“Funny,” she said flatly. “Because that's not what it feels like to me.”

Charles mirrored her action. “Everything I do, I do to protect you. Everything I do, I do to ensure that I will never have to pick you out of a gutter. Everything I do, I do to ensure that you will never have to identify my body at a police station- why can you not understand that?”

“Because you're wrong!” she shouted. “Because you treat me like a child- I'm twenty six!”

“You're right, of course,” Charles said quietly. “You're a grown woman. I recognise that. Raven- do you really think that I want this? Do you think that if I had my wishes, you would- we would- have to live like this? Of course not.”

He was silent for a moment, and then, with a far-away look in his eyes, said, “It's changing. Or it's going to change. People are ready, nearly. I can feel it, and I will do my utmost to see it through, you realise this? I will give everything I have to make the world see us as- as something less than monstrous. But in order for that to happen, we have to live. We have to be careful. We must be beyond reproach, Raven. Tell me you understand that.”

Raven slumped against a wall, her face drained. “Mutants?” she said, after a moment. “Or- or queers?”

Charles smiled a small, twisted smile. “Both. Either. Does it really matter?”

Raven pulled off her boots and brushed past him. This time, he let her.

“By the way,” she said over her shoulder, “They arrested Professor Johnston in Beacon Park last night. I thought you’d want to know.”

\------

 _July 19th, 1962_  
Someone knocked, and it is late, far past the time for calling; he would know that it was Erik even if he were not a telepath. And so he pushed himself off the grey sheets of his motel bed, undershirt sticking to his sweaty frame.  
He had discarded with his belt and trousers as well, and did not bother replacing these articles before pulling open the battered wooden door.

Erik stood there motionless, a bottle of whiskey in hand. He had traded in his customary turtleneck for a white polo shirt that clung alluringly to well-defined muscles, but was otherwise unchanged.

Charles coughed, his throat suddenly dry, and tore his eyes away. “Can I help you?”

Erik smiled slightly. “I thought- I doubt you can sleep either, in this heat. I wondered- you mentioned that you brought your chess set?”

Charles returned it, tentatively. “Of course. Do come in.”

He ushered the other man in, and took a hasty sip of the warm glass of water he had left on the night stand.

\------

_August 1st, 1962_  


“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It was another day, another hotel room, another mutant who failed to be swayed by Charles’ vision of the future, another game of chess, another argument that Erik refused to concede.

Charles sighed, stretched his neck. “I think you’ll find I do.”

This was said quietly, without looking away from his bishop.

Erik snorted. “Don't be arrogant. How is that possible?”

Charles considered him quietly, before reaching across and laying his hand on the other man's knee.

Erik shifted uncomfortably. “It's not the same.”

“No, it isn't,” Charles said. “Although I imagine that the same people who want to destroy queers would not be terribly fond of mutants, either.”

His grip on the other man's leg tightened. Erik tensed, but did not move away.

“Charles...” Erik's voice was pained, his eyes shut.

“Erik.”

“I can't be that. The person you want. I'm never going to be that person.”

Charles looked at him. “You underestimate yourself, my friend.”

Erik laughed quietly and shook his head. “No, you don't understand. I don't want to be.”

Charles smiled softly and removed his hand. “You want this too. I know you do.”

“Not as much as I want victory.”

“How does that have anything to do with it?”

“It's war, Charles. And in war, something like this would just drag you down.”

“It doesn't have to. It doesn't have to change anything. We could just- pretend it never happened.”

“It would change things, though.” Erik is quiet. “I can't afford distractions.”

They were quiet, for a moment. Charles leaned in and pressed his lips against the other man's.

They tasted of whiskey and sweat, Erik's unshaven chin rasping against his own flesh.

After a minute, he pulled away.

Erik looked away. “Why did you do that?”

His voice was rough and low.

“Because I never would have forgiven myself otherwise,” Charles said conversationally, returning his attention his bishop. “Check in two, by the way.”  


\------

It didn’t help, in the end; the years of ruthless self-denial going up in smoke, because they left anyway, Raven saying something about pride, and in her words there lay the ghosts of a thousand fights and disagreements now consigned to the cold memory of an Oxford winter, and Charles did not cry. 

...

Charles has lived his life knowing exactly what people think of him, and it has given him a certain arrogance, yes, but also a knowledge that we are what others will make of us, and he had work to do. He had a school to run. He had a world to build. 

It was ironic, after a fashion, because Charles had never been a religious man, no more so than one must be to remain within the boundaries of propriety, and yet he remade himself, during those long days in a hospital bed, the phantom pains of limbs that could not feel and the stiff cramps of his upper abdomen forming a bitter backdrop to this new world. 

He wanted to- what.  
(He wanted Erik.)

But Charles has made a lifetime of wanting things that he cannot have, and so has become practised at accepting a substitute.  
(He doesn’t marry. It wouldn’t be right, wouldn’t be fair, even if he were not a _cripple_.)

He trains them, these children not much younger than himself, and then more; imbuing them with the courage of a world that is ready to change, a world that is coming to terms with itself, and it delights and frightens him in equal measure, and they fight and they strive and they lose, but sometimes- sometimes they win. 

And he realises, as the years tick on and the first class graduates, then the second, then the tenth- that there are children, now, children coming into their first year, who are _proud_ , that soon there will be those who do not even remember the shadows of his youth- and he thinks he should be angry but instead he is grateful, so grateful, because it means that he was right, that things would get better, and that there are people who are free. 

Let them forget. He hopes they forget. He hopes that they never need to know what it was like, to be hated, to be tortured the way they were. Let them forget the men and women like him, their struggles and their tears and their thrice-damned shame, because they are old, and they are slowly beginning to die out. 

1978 sees the election of Harvey Milk. It also sees his assassination. 

1983 sees the election of Stephen Durham, a soft-spoken Iowan who is a traditional Democrat in every respect except for the fact that he can shoot water out of his fingertips. 

Jean-Paul Beaubier comes out twice in 1984, and in doing so becomes the first openly gay member of a major superhero team, and when Charles hears the news he only smiles and says nothing. 

1990 sees the first inter-gena marriage, a female mutant from Delaware with hair made of fire, and a charming professor of tax law from Indiana. 

(The first same-sex inter-gena marriage will come from Norway, when a man whose skin ripples with camouflage clutched his partner defiantly in front of hundred of cheering onlookers and walks into the town hall.)

Charles watches this, and says nothing publicly- a private word here, a nudge there, a sternly-worded letter to this captain of industry, a public endorsement of that politician- and waits as the world that he had wanted but had been terrified of asking for grew slowly into existence.  
Erik only helps, strangely; allows Charles to position himself as the rationalist, the moderate, the one who is willing to negotiate- and the irony is palpable, as the country happily reforms itself, thinking it had gotten off rather lightly. 

And so the world moves on, and if it is one with no place in it for an old, tired man- well. He has only himself to blame, and he is proud, so proud.  


\-----  


_October 17th, 2029_

Years later, when Charles was old, older than he had ever thought he would be, but then the world has changed so much since he was a child, someone will ask him- writing their doctoral thesis, or a book, Charles isn’t sure, his mind fogs these days,  
“Professor Xavier, over the last half-century, your name has become synonymous with the mutant rights movement- do you have any regrets?”

The woman asking him this will smile slightly, and Charles will look at her from his bed where he spends so much of his time these days, his robe neatly tied behind him, and feel the warm thoughts that project from her very core as her mind wanders slightly and she thinks of her partner, a beautiful dark-skinned woman in uniform whose irises changed colour, and of their child, a fiesty three year old boy, and he will say,

“Not a one,” determinedly not thinking about the fear and shame and hundreds of wasted lives- the dead and buried and scared, the minds he had touched, of Matthew and Erik and Raven-

the hero of the story is always alone, in the end.


End file.
